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Donald Trump had said in his inaugural address that the United States recognises only two genders — male and female — as both are “immutable biological reality”.
US President Donald Trump (Reuters Image)
The United States State Department has halted all passport applications with ‘X’ sex markers, while also freezing changes to gender identity on the existing travel document, according to a report.
The move comes days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day of office in his second term. Trump, in his inaugural address on January 20 at the Capitol, had also said that there will only be two official genders recognised in the US – male and female.
Marco Rubio’s Instructions To State Department
Secretary of State in the new Trump administration, Marco Rubio instructed the department staff on Thursday to enforce the new guidelines for the official documentation strictly, The Guardian reported, citing an internal cable.
“The policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable,” the email read.
This follows the executive order signed by Trump which declared that the US recognises only two genders and described male and female as an “immutable biological reality”.
The executive order, named “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”, makes it mandatory that US government-issued identification documents distinctively use “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female”.
Who Will New Passport Directives Impact?
Rubio directed the department that “sex, and not gender, shall be used” in official documents including passports and consular reports of birth abroad documents, The Guardian reported.
As per the report, the State Department staff were ordered to “suspend any application requesting an X sex marker” and “suspend any application where the applicant is seeking to change their sex marker” from the definition stated in the executive order.
Both current passport holders and the ones planning to apply for one will be impacted by the two-gender policy in the US.
Notably, the US State Department began issuing passports with non-binary third-gender identification ‘X’ in April 2022.
Passports with the ‘X’ gender marker are still valid, but renewing them could be a problem, the White House told the news site Notus. Rubio’s email mentioned that “guidance on existing passports containing an X sex marker will come via other channels”.
There is no clarity on the number of passports currently using the ‘X’ marker in the US.
- Location :
Washington D.C., United States of America (USA)
